


Closing In

by Sarai



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Background Zoya/Nikolai, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Genya/David, attempted banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24058474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: David's experiments with a new technology lead to a tender moment between him and Genya, and a broader fear for the Triumvirate about the rising threats on Ravka's borders.
Relationships: David Kostyk/Genya Safin, Nikolai Lantsov/Zoya Nazyalensky
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	Closing In

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Grishaverse Big Bang's mini bang activity and accompanies these beautiful artworks of [Zoya & Nikolai by blue-artisces](https://blue-artisces.tumblr.com/post/617475398539804672/my-piece-for-grishaversebigbang-mini-bang-event) and [Genya & David by oranges-and-stuff](https://oranges-and-stuff.tumblr.com/post/617499705433374720/some-comfy-fabritailor-for-the).

Genya felt the eyes on her, the attention like sweet caresses over her back and shoulders—and if she let her dressing gown slip a few inches lower, then it was no one’s business anyway what passed between her and her husband. After years spent pretending not to notice, not to loathe the hands that crawled over her body, she sometimes surprised herself with how quickly she had grown to appreciate David’s attention. It was different. Honest and adoring from a man who did not think she was broken, frightening, anything but wonderful.

If she had more time, she would have returned to bed. Alas, duty called. She dressed quickly before glancing back at him.

“David.”

After a moment’s pause, the human-sized cocoon of blankets replied, “Is this one of those times when you like saying my name or are you asking for a response?”

“I’m asking for a response. Is everything all right? Were you not Grisha, I would think you were ill. Normally I have to drag you out of the lab.” Even when she did, he snapped back to it as soon as he could.  
  
Nice as their little moments were, Genya Safin and David Kostyk rarely had time to linger with one another. But they had their moments nonetheless. When circumstances or their king forced him to abandon his experiments for a few hours, David always shook Genya awake and said her name, so she never woke up to a startled jolt and an unexpected body in the bed. Genya worked at eliminating idioms from her vocabulary when she spoke to him. Partly it was because David did notice people laughing at his inability to understand them, and partly because she did not want their seconds wasted.

Said the cocoon, “I’m postulating various simulations to be better prepared to design experiments. 'S important.” Only then did David sit up, fix his attention on Genya, and ask, “Am I neglecting you again? You’re truly radiant. Like the sun rising over the mountaintops and bringing color into a world of shadows.” 

If the words sounded awkward, it was because they weren’t his. Genya could tell when Nadia and Tamar had coached him. Presumably Tolya had helped as well, Nadia wasn’t averse to a little flowery language, but the extended metaphor sounded like it might have come from one of the poems Tolya had memorized.

“You’re not neglecting me,” she said, smiling because he had all the romance of a donkey sometimes, but he tried. She loved him because he tried. 

Genya sat on the edge of the bed.

David hugged her. She had been thinking more along the lines of a kiss, but this was nice, too. His touch had the same adoration as his gaze, the same honesty as his awkward compliments.

“I do love you,” he said. Matter-of-fact and defensive and perhaps a little confused, but entirely David.

When he pulled away, she spotted the blisters.

“What happened?” Genya asked, reaching for David’s arm. “Why haven’t you seen a Healer?” There was no reason for him to suffer—for anyone to, really, but he was a member of the Triumvirate. They knew Healers personally. He might have asked Tolya, between hoping the man would teach him new lines of romantic verse, this seemed minor enough for even a Heartrender to fix.

David didn’t reply. He looked puzzled, blinking in confusion.

Genya stroked his arm, gentle fingertips tracing the spray of blisters. Something felt… different. She wasn’t certain what, only that something in some corner of her mind found the blisters… wrong. On a whim, she tried Tailoring one away.

Nothing happened.

“David, what is this?”

He flexed his fingers—not making fists, just shifting, uncomfortable.

“Stay here,” she told him.

She had the door open when David called after her, “May I get dressed?”

She knew that was a joke and laughed as she replied, “At your discretion, but consider it unnecessary!”

She was on her way back to the bedroom when she passed Zoya, who greeted her with a nod—then paused.

“Just what are you two getting up to?” she asked, arching one perfect eyebrow at the antiseptic and the roll of bandages in Genya’s hands.

“What is Nikolai getting up to?” Genya replied. 

“Why do you assume I—oh, all right,” Zoya ceded from Genya’s look. Zoya could reduce most anyone to tears with those ridiculously talented eyebrows, with a single hmph. But Genya could tell her friend when this wasn’t the time for posturing, and it wasn’t.

Grisha didn’t get sick. When they were wounded, they saw Healers. During the war, when David had done what he could for her injuries, when he had been unable to hide her scars but helped to heal the deeper wounds so she could at least walk without pain, it had been… intimate. Unfamiliar. But not unpleasant. Having him close made her less aware of the inherent wrongness of an injury resistant to Grisha craft.  
  
It occurred to her she had no idea whether David would feel the same. He could be peculiar about being touched and might find this unpleasant.

“If you’re going to walk around with these, keep them wrapped up,” Genya said.

David nodded. He probably already knew that, but the blisters bothered her. Vulnerabilities, she realized—she didn’t like them because they were vulnerabilities. Genya was not subject to the mortal concern about growing old together. They would, but they had centuries ahead of them before they needed to worry about those things. Bodies weakening, failing—that was not a concern for young Grisha.

She dampened a cloth with an antiseptic with a strong alcoholic tang, then took his wrist and gently drew his arm out.

“Is this all right?”

“Yes.”

She was careful with his blisters, slow, shifting her fingers on his wrist as she did. He had scatters of freckles on his arms. Not for the first time, she let her attention linger on the scar by his elbow. He’d had it for as long as she had known him, a jagged curve from a childhood accident. She had asked once about his childhood. Unimportant, he had said. 

She released his wrist and set down the cloth, then picked up a roll of bandages.

“Hold your arm up—not like that,” Genya said, guiding David’s arm down. “I’m going to wrap it now.”

She was careful with him, aware of the pressure of her fingers against his skin, of the places there were bandages between them and the places there were not, the slim, warm moments of contact. Genya glanced up at David. He stared, transfixed. She never could guess what those dark eyes took in, everything he saw and how it became something he knew.

“There,” she said. “I need your left arm now.”

He offered his left arm. Genya pushed his right arm down—she was finished with that one—before going to work on the left. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the school?” David asked, half-startling Genya. 

“I have a meeting with Nikolai, I’m going to make him eat his handkerchief.”

“Can I watch?”

“Why, David, you’re not usually so vengeful!”

“I’m not vengeful,” he replied. “I'm curious.”

Genya laughed and kissed him. Another metaphor, she realized belatedly. She blamed Nikolai. Knowing him, he probably would find a way to eat his handkerchief. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


"The Fjerdans have been developing these weapons for some time," Tamar said. "They're only starting to have success."  
  
Genya shook her head. "First the parem. Now this."  
  
Zoya kept her arms folded, attention on Nikolai. Precisely what did her king plan to do about this? Did he even understand? When Alina led the Second Army, Zoya had her doubts about the girl. At least she had been Grisha, though. At least she knew what that meant.  
  
Nikolai took a piece of cloth from the table. It was made of tiny metal rings, almost archaic-styled.  
  
"We knew they kept Grisha prisoners," he mused.  
  
Yes, Nina's reports had been helpful. She had been certain that the Ice Court was fortified with Grisha craft, her reports delivered in a level of detail only possible from the highest placed spy or an erstwhile petty criminal. They gave Zoya the uncomfortable feeling of walls inching closer. They made her want to call a storm and force those walls away from her. She was Grisha. She was Zoya Nazyalensky, and nothing in this world or the next had the right to pen her in.  
  
Addressing Tamar, Zoya asked, "What news of a Fjerdan alliance with the Shu?"  
  
"None yet," Tamar said.  
  
Everyone in the room understood: the Shu had long believed that there was some science, some fundamental elemental difference between Grisha and non-Grisha. The Fjerdans' scientifically calibrated weaponry seemed to confirm that belief.  
  
"Shu science and Fjerdan zealotry," Genya mused.  
  
"When did the Shu become a factor?" David had finally looked up from his book.  
  
"If the Fjerdans have Grisha-specific weaponry, if their scientists have proven some elemental Grisha-ness to target, they'll confirm everything the Shu believe about us," Genya explained.  
  
"And the Fjerdans," Tamar added. "They will try to use this to eradicate us."  
  
Zoya heard their fear and gave a dismissive _hmph_ . She refused to entertain this discussion. She refused to be cowed, by things real or imagined.  
  
Addressing their unusually quiet king, Tamar asked, "Can Ravka fight a war on two fronts?"  
  
Nikolai returned the cloth to the table. Whatever his mind saw within, he would share when he was ready. Even if Zoya sometimes wanted to slap the flowery language out of him and demand he deliver his conclusions directly.  
  
"We will if we must," he said.  
  
The Kerch, she guessed. He had played rather unfaithfully with the Kerch and if Ravka needed their naval support--she thought again of Nina, of her friend Brekker.  
  
David frowned. "But it's not science," he said.  
  
Suddenly every eye in the room was on David.  
  
"At least… not otkazat'sya science," he amended, "it's the small science."  
  
It was Zoya who said it: " _What?_ "

"It was made with the small science. As much as I could tell, it works like grenatye, but it targets Grisha craft." He looked around the room, then concluded, "No one read my report." If she didn't know better, she might have thought him bothered.  
  
"I read your report, David," Nikolai said, "but I don't want this written down, even as theory. Grisha craft to target Grisha craft--we control who learns of this. Until we can counter it, this information only reaches those it must. No one else read your report because I burned the other copies."  
  
_Good_ , Zoya thought.

"As I recall, I specifically told you this information was not to be shared."

"No," David replied, plucking at the frayed edges of his kefta. If Nikolai wanted to be kept humble despite his rule, his brilliance, and his self-proclaimed good looks, David would oblige. He didn't challenge, as Zoya would. He corrected. As though it were simple fact that the king was _wrong_. "You told me not to speak of it."

Genya folded her arms. "You told him to keep this from the rest of the Triumvirate?"

"None of this is more than theoretical. I wanted the theory confirmed before it spread--safely confirmed," Nikolai added with a look in David's direction.  
  
"Yes," said Zoya, "how unlike David to commit rampant acts of science."  
  
"We'll need otkazat'sya-made gear." David said this almost mildly. Almost like he did not just imply that this Fjerdan weaponry had not only targeted and effectively neutralized Ravka's greatest strength, but weaponized it, too.  
  
Zoya looked to Genya. Of everyone in this room, only they truly knew what their old enemy had been capable of. Only they had been so deeply in his thrall he had all but changed who they were, managed how they thought. Only they truly understood.  
  
"It's a new verse for an old song," Genya said.  
  
Zoya nodded. Yes, they both understood.  
  
"The greatest threat to the Grisha," Zoya said, "has always been ourselves."  
  
A beat of heavy silence hit the room. Then David turned the page in his book, an almost comically mundane sound amid the horror, and Nikolai said, "A man could almost be hurt, Zoya."  
  
She scoffed, annoyed and grateful toward the otkazat'sya king.  
  
"She didn't mean that," Genya said, "you're very frightening, sobachka. Your Majesty."  
  
Tamar enjoyed that much more than Zoya did, though it still made her laugh.  
  
This new development gave all of them something to see to, yet as the others left the room, Zoya lingered. David explained he would study his ruined equipment; Tamar would send word through her network of spies (though not before warning David she expected her wife returned intact); and Genya, well aware that this impacted corporalki work as much as materialki, already making preparations in her mind. Zoya stayed to give one last long look at the small collection of seemingly innocuous weaponry on the table before turning her attention to her king.  
  
"Eventually we will need to know how this affects you, Nikolai," Zoya said.  
  
"I'm not Grisha."  
  
"But you are Grisha craft," she pointed out. The monster inside him was made through the small science, albeit a perversion of the small science. Did that make him safer? Or more in danger than any of them? Seeing a flicker of something like pain cross his face, Zoya said, "The monster is our reality and if that thing is a danger to Ravka we will address it."  
  
Her tone, though not her words, said _even if I must separate your head from your shoulders._  
  
"Oh, Zoya, my sweet summer flower," Nikolai said. "However does a soul as gentle as yours manage in this harsh world?"  
  
Zoya scoffed. They would, though--manage. Together, they would manage. She knew there was a reason he turned to her. She was not kind--she was not Genya. And she was not sorry for it--she was not David.  
  
It wasn't comfort, then, or apology. Maybe it was acknowledgment of his need for her. Maybe it was respect of the same. Whatever the reason, Zoya rested her hand on his. Their eyes met, just briefly, and he gave her a nod, the resignation in his gaze tougher than Grisha steel.  
  
Whatever this was, they--Ravka--would see it through.


End file.
